Bad Cover Versions: Muse: Feeling Good

After my Belle and Sebastian Track of the Week feature, the Anti-Twee Police got in contact with me and threatened to revoke my amateur music critic licence unless I tone down the tweeness and go at least a week without going gooey eyed about bands of fey Gaswegians in junk shop clothes. So here is my new feature: a look at the most embarrasing, hamfisted cover versions in music history. Today, Muse murder a Nina Simone classic. Now, I know that she didn't write the song, but Nina Simone's incredible voice - sensuous and cal, yet full of joy and power and ultimately feeling - makes the song her own. On to Muse. Muse have based their whole career on the middle section of Radiohead's 'Creep' - you know, the awful bit with the load guitars where Thom Yorke moans 'Sheeeeeees climbing up the wooaoaaaaaahhhh!' or something like that - and then cramming every second full of ridiculous, high picthed screaching guitars, loud drumming and Matt Bellamy's histrionic screaching. Subtlety does not feature. So why the band thought that they could tackle this classic song is in itself something of a mystery, though I would suggest it might have something to do with Muse not being the brightest sparks on the planet. So, the song is converted into an awful space-rock heavy metal version. The original's delicate piano chords and string sections are replaced with hackneyed head-banging power chords. And Nina Simone's beautiful, unique voice is replaced by Bellamy's thin screaching - he even sings one of the verses through a megaphone. Since Muse have intrinsically no real understanding of dynamics - there is a 'quiet' bit, but because of the way the record is mastered, there is no real difference between that and the 'loud' bit apart from the number of instruments playing - the whole subtle build up of the original is lost. By the end of the sorry affair, one does start wondering if the whole operation was done intentionally by Muse because they hated the poor song so much.